


L/A/S

by rageprufrock



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-05
Updated: 2016-02-05
Packaged: 2018-05-18 10:58:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5925970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rageprufrock/pseuds/rageprufrock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Kirk gets beaten like a rented mule behind a bar, sulks about it for a significant period of time, is forced to endure Spock in eyeliner, and points out that no one is ever going to buy what Spock's selling -- unless they train him up a bit. Abandoned WIP.</p>
            </blockquote>





	L/A/S

The excuses already rolling off of Kirk's tongue when he wakes up in the sickbay are 90 percent slurring, 10 percent consonants, and no matter how much he insists _none of this was his fault_ Bones appears to be ignoring him so Jim gives up and goes back to sleep.  The second time he wakes up, he has new arguments and his speech is leaning closer toward intelligible, so he tries to tell Bones that honestly, anybody would have done what he did if they'd accidentally tripped over an incredibly illegal slave trafficking operation, at which point Bones rolls his eyes and stabs Jim in the neck with a hypo.  The third time he opens his eyes, it's Spock glaring down at him, and Jim briefly considers the cost/benefit analysis of attempting to move his unmovable first officer, figures it's not worth the saliva he'd waste forming words, and goes back to sleep of his own volition. 

The fourth time he wakes up, Bones actually has the gall to say, "It's about time, you moron," and before Kirk can protest or threaten to put him into vaporlock, his hospital bed pushes him violently into an upright and seated position.

"Holy shit," Kirk says.  The inside of his mouth tastes like a compost heap.

"Captain," Admiral Pike says, looking amused and lucid and not like he was just beaten up by a bunch of thugs behind a bar in a non-Federation backwater in Gamma Sector.  

Kirk blinks at him twice.  "Uh, welcome to the Enterprise," he says, and hopes they hosed him off after they dumped him into sickbay.  His memories of the alley where he'd tried to stage a one-man intervention reveal it to be decorated largely to match a broken urinal.

"Thank you, Kirk," Pike chirps, hovering around the bed smoothly.  "And don't worry, Spock's been a pleasure."

Which is one of those things that Kirk likes to pretend doesn't bug him, but bugs him _enormously_.  Worse than the way Uhura won't even cough up a first name (it's mostly just to emasculate him socially now — it's not like he's not the captain of her starship or anything and can't look it up) is the way Pike and Spock beam at each other.  Or Pike beams at Spock and Spock almost looks pleasant in return, anyway.

"It has been pleasing to renew our working relationship," Spock allows, and one corner of his mouth actually darts almost upward when he looks at Pike.

"Right," Kirk says, because he can't say, _God, just get a room, you two_.  "Anyway."

"Thanks to your heroic bad judgment on shore leave," Pike says, "we have some of the first concrete evidence of slave trafficking that's been suspected for decades — Federation higher-ups can't decide whether to censure you for brawling or give you another piece of chest candy."

"How about we do nothing and call it even?" Kirk suggests the same time Spock says, "Censure would be ineffective anyway."

And then, as Kirk is glowering at Spock for blatant disloyalty and Spock is staring flatly back with fearless insubordination, Pike says, "Anyway, I'm here to read you in."

"Read me in?" Kirk asks, forcing himself to look away from Spock.  "On what?"

Spock's face grows curiously closed over, or at least some fraction of a degree more closed over, and then Pike — who spares a second to give his ex-first officer a thoughtful look — says, "We're staging an op to infiltrate the trafficking ring — "

"That's great," Kirk starts.

" — and we're going to be borrowing Commander Spock for it," Pike finishes.

***

Sometime during the 26 hours Kirk had been unconscious, Pike had boarded the Enterprise, seduced Spock with his professionalism and rational judgment and then pimped him out to the Federation.  Literally.

"All the other relevant arguments I have on this subject aside, why would _anyone_ want a Vulcan hooker?" Kirk asks.

" _Consort_ ," Spock corrects.

Kirk stares at him.  "Yeah, that makes it better," he says, and Pike cuts in with:

"This isn't your everyday trafficking ring, Captain, they're not interested in common merchandise — our intelligence says their buyers are serious collectors of the rare."  He turns to nod at Spock.  "It's just lucky that we have one available."

"If I was saying this stuff, you would have started beating me like a rented mule, I'd just like to point that out," Kirk says to Spock.

Spock only looks serene and beautiful and untouchable, as always, and Kirk determinedly thinks that there is absolutely nothing at all even mildly attractive about the prospect of owning that, having it — having Spock — at his mercy.  Nothing.  At all.

"Admiral Pike's logic for soliciting me for this mission was perfectly sound," Spock says.  "A Vulcan would be a rare enough gem to draw almost any of the ring's clients, and I, as the only one with Starfleet training, am the obvious candidate to assist with this operation."

Pike's got that determined look on his face, the one that got Kirk to Starfleet and probably tricked Spock into working on his bridge crew.  And then there's the fact that he's a highly decorated Admiral within Starfleet, and Jim Kirk's that kid who fell and tripped into a captain's chair.  

"Fine," Jim mutters.  "But I swear to God, nobody's going to buy _Spock_ as a consort."

Spock nods at this.  "It is true I lack the training and mannerisms," he says, his eyes flickering, a tiny drop in the endless placid dark of his irises.

"Oh, don't worry," Pike dismisses, already floating away, "we'll get you set up with some classes — train you up."

"Okay, so," Kirk says, jabbing violently at the buttons on the side of his hospital bed, "You go teach Spock how to be a hooker — I'll just have a lie down."

***

Worse even than being under Bones' power-mad tyranny is the fact that about three hours later, Spock drops by with his augmented work schedule while they're docked for repairs, refueling and refurbishing in San Francisco.  In between shifts Spock has blocked out such horrible things as " _Dephnian music"_ and " _tutoring with Colonel V'Tacr_ " and " _study of Cardassian dance_."Dephnian music is mostly played at orgies, Colonel V'Tacr is half-Deltan and also a slut, and while Jim's never seen any Cardassian dancing, he would bet money that's slutty, too.

"I thought you said 'consort,'" Jim says, eyeing Spock over the top of the PADD suspiciously.

"I did, Captain," Spock confirms."Is there a problem?"

"Most of these things are heavily skank-oriented," Jim points out reasonably, and ignores the way Bones covers his face in despair in the background."Aren't consorts supposed to be classier?"

Spock almost looks like he's repressing a smile."Colonel V'Tacr suggested that while high art is appreciated, some baser appeal might increase my value at sale," he says, as if serenely unconcerned he's pricing his own ass."I agreed that it might be beneficial to expand my sensual horizons beyond merely the human or Vulcan scope."

Jim tries very hard not to think about how Spock said 'sensual horizons,' as if he has them.It's difficult, especially given that he's apparently banging Uhura — which, Jim cannot _believe_ she's letting this happen — but that's an entirely different bucket of awkward he'd rather not overturn right now.

"You do realize you're not obligated to do this, right?" Jim tries.

"I feel a sense of duty, Captain," Spock replies smoothly."Admiral Pike impressed upon me the violence and cruelty exercised by the traders — I admit I will be very satisfied if our operation helps to dismantle the infrastructure for such abuses in the future."

Jim hands the PADD back to Spock, who is now determined to become not just a hooker, but an excellent one.It's really too much for a guy with three broken ribs, so he just throws an arm over his face and says, "Okay, carry on."

***

Bones deems Jim stable enough to move the next day and kicks him out of the Enterprise sickbay into Starfleet's military hospital, adjacent to the academy, a shockingly ugly sprawl of tan concrete and gray-toned glass.It was just the sort of architectural disaster that spawned discussion threads like, "starfleet visual fail an act of agency to demoralize students from mutiny? y/y?" on the student intranet. 

(That same intranet also hosts conversations ranking professors at the academy by fuckability, with Spock always coming among the top three — which, Jim reflects glumly, might be where Pike got that stupid-ass idea about turning Jim's first officer into a whore anyway.  He vows to fail everybody when, one day, Starfleet is forced to allow him to teach a class.)

He's situated in a 15th floor sickroom with all the charm of a Klingon retiring room and provided basic cable, limited access to a PADD, and a constant stream of tormentors.There are the doctors who keep doing double-takes at his medical file before darting out of the room to comm Bones (usually followed by a lot of obnoxious laughter in the hallway) and the nurses, who are all too happy to stab him with shit constantly but obviously can't be fucked to give a brother some love when he angles his best Bad Boy I Used To Own A Motorcycle smile at them.There's also a stream of admiralty — and this is obviously Jim's fucking _favorite_ part — who have seized upon Jim's infirm state to stand in his doorway and look sorrowful they ever gave him the Enterprise. 

And then there's his own God damn crew.

"I'm supposed to be recuperating here," Jim tells Scotty, who just shoves his PADD — covered in some sort of dubious and sticky black substance Jim didn't want to think about — more aggressively into his face.

"And you'll get right back to it, as soon as you sign off on these engine mods," Scotty argues. Jim's momentarily tempted just to let Scotty do it, whatever it is, but some latent thread of responsibility makes him read the screen first. 

It's at that point Jim's forced to point out that if Scotty thinks Admiral Archer's response to that whole unfortunate beagle incident was bad, then Scotty doesn't even want to know the definition of the word, because Jim will _fuck Scotty's shit up_ if he so much as _thinks about_ the cockamamie idea he'd jotted up any more.

"I already said I was sorry about the dog," Scotty complains, clutching his PADD and looking wronged."And we did find it again.Sort of."

Jim points at the door of his hospital room."Go away."

And after Scotty, there's Sulu (drops by to say hi and who offer to bring him weed) and Chekov (who still didn't know what weed _is_ but is an always-reliable source for excellent vodka) and then Bones swings by to snatch away Jim's joints and booze like the giant God damn joykill he is.

"Come on!" Jim whines, listening to Bones stuff the vodka in the pockets of his labcoat and flush the weed down the toilet before he stomps back out, glowering."That was all pain management — what kind of friend are you?"

Instead of being apologetic about it, Bones actually has the gall to stick his hand under Jim's pillow and take the one precious joint he'd managed to save, crumbling it up in his hand as he mutters, "Jesus _Christ,_ first _Spock_ , walking around God damn Starfleet with fucking _eyeliner_ on, now this," but Jim pretty much loses track of the rest of the complaint there, because _oh my God, eyeliner._

He spends the rest of the day flat on his back, staring at the ceiling in despair.

***

Spock in eyeliner is the most profoundly terrible thing that has ever happened to Jim. 

There was, of course, the better-left-unexplored childhood, the string of semi-abusive stepfathers who seemed to spend most of their time in Jim's life trying to erase all the vapor traces of George Kirk that Jim loved so much.There was that wayward ten years or so that had started when he'd hurled his father's car off the cliff — because he'd rather her die loved and in a blaze of glory than dirtied by somebody else's hands — and stretched long and reprehensible until that night in the bar in Iowa, Pike's curious expression and his outright dare.There was watching Vulcan collapse in on itself, the grief of being inside Ambassador Spock's head.There's knowing everybody's waiting for him to fail pretty much all the time.

But no, Spock in eyeliner is still the worst thing that's ever happened, Jim decides.

Vulcans, from what Jim knows from his intro xenobiology courses and the few he's seen in person, are all dark-eyed with architectural lines in the structures of their faces.All of Vulcan's 45 degree angles are blurred with Spock's human genes.His face is a long oval, the line of his jaw softer, his mouth a flattened pout.Spock's eyes are the color of freshly pressed coffee and almond shaped, drowning-deep and sweet, even if Spock would never be any such thing, and fringed in midnight black kohl, the heavy sweep of his lashes darkened even further — and Kirk can tell Spock tried to wash all the make-up off, it's blurred a little, softer and smokey — Spock's eyes are stunning.

It's horrible.

"Captain, have you heard anything I've said?" Spock asks, irritable.

Jim stares at him.He's been released from the hospital only to be restricted to desk work, which is why he's cowering behind one in his office — he has an _office_ , how fucked up is _that_ — in the bowels of Starfleet, caucusing with Spock about stuff and things. 

"How are your whore lessons going?" he asks, trying to be solicitous, which the 16-hour HR seminar Starfleet had made him take had encouraged, but also using the word 'whore,' which they hadn't.He figures it canceled one another out.

Sighing would probably be considered expression an emotion, so Spock doesn't.Instead one of his eyebrows darts upward in a deeply annoyed fashion and he says, unperturbed as always, "My extracurricular classes are acceptable; Admiral Pike tells me I am performing adequately and that I should be convincing in time for Starfleet's operation."

"Oh," Jim says."Great."

He tries not to think about Pike monitoring Spock's 'lessons,' but mostly, his brain dredges up holoporn scenarios where Pike calls Spock a bad boy and offers to discipline him until he appreciates why he got an A- in skankology.Then, it really devolves.It's not a good place to be, mentally.

Clearing his throat, Spock continues, "Returning to our earlier discussion, I think it would be wise to consider adding at least another 20 crew members.Enterprise certainly has the capacity and the need. Engineering as well as life science, and communications as well, would all benefit from having additional personnel."

Jim agrees, because the Enterprise had been, on those first few milk runs, a little shoestring and bubblegum — not that Spock knew what that meant when Jim had said it on the bridge that one time — and it'd do them good to have a few more people. 

Instead, because he's developed some kind of Space Tourette's he needs to get checked out right the fuck away, Jim says, "Hey, so, that Cardassian dancing — is that ho-rrific?"

Spock stares at him, blank.

"Sorry," Jim says."I mean like, ho-ey."Oh God, he can't stop himself."Basically, is it skank city," he goes on, listening to himself talk in numbing mortification.

"It is very regimented," Spock finally says.

"Is that a euphemism?" Jim asks.

"I am going to make the personnel requests," Spock tells him, rising to his feet with brisk efficiency."When the proper paperwork has been filed, I will acquire your approval via the electronic signatory system and I will leave you to your own...devices.Is this satisfactory?"

"Oh, thank God," Jim gasps, because backed up in his throat are a number of seriously fucking inappropriate questions about whether or not anybody's taught Spock that trick about popping his jaw to get more cock down his throat and he'd like to be able to look the guy in the — fuck, _stunning_ — eyes again sometime in the next year."Please."

***

The personnel request Spock files and that Jim signs off on — remotely, thank God — is approved in an unprecedentedly short amount of time.  Seriously, there's possibly a three microsecond blip between the minute Jim's signatory record hits the file and they get the green light.  They get twenty people and change — ten for engineering, two for communications, and another nine dispatched to various parts of the ship, including commissioned on-board diplomats and another mathematician for Spock.  Jim can already feel his tension headache from Chekov's aggressive, 18-year-old sulking.

It turns out to be one of those things he thinks and that comes spilling out of his mouth by accident, like that time he told his brother about finger-banging his prom date or how he'd told Bones once about that super-awkward dream he'd had about him that one time, and how Bones had refused to talk to him for a month.

"Ensign Chekov has been a vision of professionalism, Captain," Spock says, falling into step with Jim as they're headed for a mission briefing.  

Jim glances at Spock from the corner of his eye first, mostly just to check he's not wearing harem pants or that God damn eyeliner again, because there're a lot of fresh cadets to dodge in this part of the building and Jim refuses to visit medical again because he broke his face staring at Spock's.  Spock is wearing his black non-combat uniform and his face is its everyday, ordinary perfection, so Jim lets out a sigh of relief before he says:

"What are you kidding me?  I'm pretty sure that kid collects locks of your hair for a shrine."

Spock arches one of his eyebrows, not losing a beat as he weaves around pair of new recruits, stunned and gap-jawed and staring at both of them.  It took Jim like, four months to learn to resist the urge to say something like, "shut your mouth or imma fuck it," which Spock said and Pike agreed was probably inappropriate.

"I have not detected any lost hair to give credence to that thought, Captain," Spock chides.  "Ensign Chekov is merely young and enthusiastic."

Jim rolls his eyes.  "Yeah, about being your girlfriend."

"Then one day, he will be forced to endure a great disappointment," Spock predicts amiably, and strides into the antechamber of the meeting room.

The Enterprise is the jewel of the Federation fleet, and where it had been slated for exploration, in a post-Vulcan world there can't be such luxuries anymore.Jim knows they're due for grinding diplomacy and arbitration, the discomfort of monitoring wars, that even Spock has looked toward more distant galaxies with longing. 

He's looked his first officer up, checked over his research, his educational history, and read in between the lines of stellar academic reports and command evaluations that Spock has a keen and curious scientific mind, and the very few opportunities Kirk has had to watch Spock learn something new have been a delight, a surprise.It's one of those stupid, half-formed thoughts of Kirk's that he'd like to see it more, to be able to give that to Spock, like an apology for all that Spock can't have anymore — and selfish, too, because Kirk wants it, to see Spock's joyfulness: secret, deep, in plain sight, but visible only to him.

"Why, Commander Spock," Kirk says, when he knocks himself out of the thought and back into reality, where Admiral Komack and Admiral Pike are behind a door with coffee and complications.  "Did you just make a funny?"

Spock's face looks the same as always, except Kirk could swear it looks like it's smiling.  "I assure you, Captain Kirk, it's all in your head."

***

The debrief is awkward and uncomfortable, but ultimately benign. 

The Enterprise's records are impeccable, and Jim, for all he spent a significant part of his late puberty and early adulthood being punched in the face, isn't exactly the dumbest tool in the shed.Komack spends some time sighing over Kirk, and the disappointment of having to deal with Kirk, and how Kirk really shouldn't have the Enterprise, and other iterations of how much he hates Jim Kirk, like really a lot.Pike, for his part, smiles in an apologetic manner to Jim and then launches into a blatant and sexually inviting discourse with Spock that is casually disguised as mission-specific conversation.

"My spies around Starfleet assure me your preparations are going well," Pike says.

Spock tips his head in a agreeable nod and Jim fists his hand and resists the urge to ask if Spock's dad knows he goes around acting like that around guys because (a) despite the rumors, he passed officer training with flying colors and he knows that's inappropriate and (b) he figures this is the sort of thing that launches him a regular shipwide shitshow if he brings it up in front of strangers.He and Spock are pretty new at this captain/first officer business, but some stuff's fairly obvious as a domestic issue.

"Indeed, Admiral Pike," Spock said."While I still have many shortcomings, my instructors believe with a few more weeks intensive practice, I will be convincing."

Jim covers his face because he can't help it." _Convincing_."

"The goal is to solicit sufficient interest to gain entree into one of the more exclusive sales," Spock chides him, disapproval filtering through his elegant vowels and consonants."As I did not grow up and develop my mannerisms in a seraglio and lack the natural sensuality of Deltans — "

Jim makes a choking noise.

" — it is only logical I seek tutelage in these areas to refine my role in this covert operation," Spock pushes ahead, and now Jim takes his face out of his hands and peers at Spock's minutely annoyed face."Do you oppose my participation in an effort to dismantle an illegal slave operation in the Federation, Captain?"

And that's just the sort of completely dick question that Spock phrases because he knows that any answer other than the one he wants is going to make the other guy look like a douchenozzle, Jim thinks resentfully. 

"I am not opposed to ending slavery, Spock," Jim reasons, "I'm...wary of your position."

Spock stiffens, nostrils flaring just the slightest bit and all the alarm bells in Jim's head go off simultaneously.Across the table, Admiral Pike has that look on his face like Jim just called Spock's mom a whore or something: equal parts surprise and schadenfreude. 

"I _assure_ you, Captain," Spock says, "no one will find me derelict in my duty."

Jim stares at him. 

"Colonel V'Tacr says I have a preternatural talent for noting the nuances associated with the erotic arts," Spock continued, and oh God, now it makes sense, because of course Spock had interpreted like Jim was saying he deserved a _B-_ or something else appalling like that.It takes a few seconds before the words "erotic arts" filter through Jim's brain, straight down like a trail of fire into his gut, and then right back up again to nurse his incipient migraine."Although I am a somewhat slower study at feigned submission, I am confident I can learn to school my external responses to authority to be pleasing enough to a potential buyer."

This time, Jim whimpers, just a little bit.

"And _furthermore_ ," Spock continues, eyes flashing, "Colonel V'Tacr says — "

"Spock," Pike interrupts, sounding dangerously like he's about to burst out laughing, "I think what Kirk is trying to say is he's worried about your _safety_."

Jim nods vigorously."Yes," he agrees."Yes.What he said."

For a moment, Spock looks arrested and nearly surprised.But then his expression clears once more and he says, in that same tone of vague irritation that plagues all of his requests for Jim's mission paperwork, "In that case, Captain, I must remind you I am completely capable of caring for myself."

It takes every iota of self-control for Jim not to imagine Spock killing a man erotically with his thighs.He's extraordinarily proud of himself when he says, "I'm just not convinced on this set-up — who else is going in?What's the backup?That sort of thing."

"Your concern for your first officer is commendable, Kirk," Komack breaks in, wry and rising to his feet, "but you're worrying for nothing — Starfleet has an extensive and very careful plan of action in this case."

Jim gives Komack a jaundiced look.It figures that asswipe would be in on tricking out Jim's first officer.They're all haters."Do you," he says flatly.

"Relax, Kirk," Pike soothes, engaging his hoverchair and pulling away from the conference room table — but not before he pauses by Spock and offers him a saucy wink, which, holy shit, Spock actually allows.What the fuck, Jim is busy thinking, which is why it takes him so long to have the brain hemorrhage after Pike says, "Spock's not going in alone or anything — I'm going to be his seller at auction."

"Acknugh," Jim says, and Komack levels him a long and suspicious glare before Pike says, cheerful as anything, "Meeting adjourned!Spock, you'd better hurry," to which Spock replies, checking his watch, "Of course — Ensign Neue opened up some space in her schedule to go through basic tantric principles, I must go."

When Bones trips over Jim — prone on the floor of his temporary rooms at Starfleet — Jim has already done the serenity prayers from eight different planets and given some serious consideration to having a good cry.There are maybe a dozen people across the populated galaxy Jim would get all fucked up over, and of course one of them is probably developing an experimental design over tantric assfuckery and mulling how to get himself sold to the most violent sexual sociopath in the known universe, like he isn't Jim Kirk's first officer and the only person Jim Kirk ever wants to have that position.

"What the fuck," Bones says to him.

"Spock's learning about tantric sex," Jim tells him, dead inside."And erotic dance."

Bones claws at his own eyes."Oh my _fucking God_."

"Then once he's like, really _good_ at whoring it up," Jim hears himself go on, "Pike's going to pretend to be sick of him or something and sell him in an auction."His chest hurts, and Jim reflects glumly that they'll probably put eyeliner on Spock again.

Almost kindly, Bones says, "You do remember that Spock was the one who dropped you with one hand, right?I wouldn't be too concerned about his virtue."

Oh God, Jim had completely forgotten about Spock's _virtue_ , he'd been so wrapped up worrying about Pike selling his first officer into dubious sexual servitude.

"I have to get in on this op," Jim decides.

"What?" Bones squawks."No!"

"Yes," Kirk says, pushing himself up into a sitting position and feeling a surge of determination.This is the right thing to do.He can feel in his gut and also the lizard brain that keeps telling him to punch people in the face."This is the right thing to do — Spock and I trust each other — "

"You know he double checks all of your reports, right?" Bones asks.

" — I owe it to him to be on his ass during this op," Jim concludes.

"Freudian!" Bones warns."Way, way too Freudian."

Jim claps Bones on the shoulder as he walks out."Thanks, man, you're a good friend."

"Go away," Bones pleads."Never talk to me about Spock again."

***

When Jim pushes his way into Admiral Pike's office, he presents his case with infallible reason.He points out that with his first officer out of commission, it's unlikely the Enterprise will be dispatched either way, and that the timeline of the mission — one week — falls neatly within the three week time frame that the remaining repairs and refurbishment for the ship's warp drives and exterior will require.In addition, Jim had excelled in advanced hand-to-hand combat, and though his name is famous now for having saved the Earth from total destruction, his face is still fairly unknown, and especially since he doesn't look beat to hell anymore, Jim points out.

"It's a comfort to me that you were the treasurer of the xenolinguistics club," Pike tells him, bemused and setting aside his PADD, "since that means that you'll probably understand most of the languages in which I tell you 'no.'"

"Sir, I think you should reconsider," Jim says, and suddenly wishes he was wearing a uniform or had at least changed out of his black t-shirt and busted jeans before he'd run down here to plead his case."Spock is a fine officer, but he's very temperamental, and my experience working with him on the Enterprise would be invaluable during the operations."

Pike actually laughs at him."Firstly, Spock is the _least_ temperamental being I've ever met, and I'm including other Vulcans in this.You're just an annoying bastard, Kirk."

Jim opens his mouth to argue that's character defamation.

" _Furthermore_ ," Pike steamrolls him, and Jim cannot help the sizzle of pure _something_ that crawls up his spine to realize Pike and Spock have been grafting speech patterns off of each other, too.God, they should just get _married_."The Enterprise wouldn't require that additional two weeks of repair if you'd steer clear of black holes, and if Spock made you, so pardon me if I'm not convinced that either of you play much of a tempering element on the other."

"It was the best course of action at the time," Jim sulks.

"Oh, and Spock argued that point vociferously when Starfleet debriefed him separately on that subject," Pike replies, sounding amused."The point stands, Kirk, that you're not making a particularly good case to tag along on this op."

"Look," Jim says, feeling annoyed it's come to this, "I really didn't want to have to bring this up, but honestly, I sort of know a lot about skanks."

Kirk's elation at being conscripted as Spock's 'muscle' lasts about as long as it takes for Spock to find out about it.

"Captain, there is no need for you to do this," Spock snaps, cornering Jim at the north windows of glass-walled library.There's a scatter of cadets in — almost everybody is outside enjoying the early-spring sun, the first warm day of the year — and it's few enough people for plausible deniability, so Jim holds up a copy of _Sexual Economics, a Journal of Sentient Trafficking and the Slave Trade in Federation and Proto-Federation States_ between himself an Spock as protection as he says:

"I'm doing this for your own good, okay?"

Spock's eyes narrow.On normal occasions, Jim would gleefully point out that was almost an emotion, but he'd rather not be killed to death in front of all of these young, impressionable cadets, a couple of whom are sort of attractive, even."In what sense is your joining this operation for my good?"

"I have considerably more experience than you do when it comes to shady characters," Jim says generously."I simply pointed out to Admiral Pike I could be useful."

Spock's eyes are basically angry slits now, which is completely fucking terrifying.

"I see," Spock allows, voice dripping with sarcasm."In that case, with your vast trove of knowledge on prostitutes, please explain to me, Captain, the necessity of someone to, quote, 'be the muscle.'"

Jim vows to fuck up Pike's hoverchair.That guy was an asshole. 

And anyway, in for a penny, in for a pound, Jim thinks, shrugs, and says, utterly shameless, "Most higher class sex workers have an enforcer."

"I'm being _sold_ at _auction_ ," Spock reminds him."It is hardly the same thing."

"But _until_ you are _sold_ at _auction_ ," Jim mimics, "it is in the best interest of your Kelly Blue Book value not to be all beat up and manhandled."

Spock huffs."Firstly, I do not know what a blue book is or why Kelly has one.Secondly, your argument is completely illogical, and thirdly, if you do not trust me to operate on my own during this mission it would have been easy enough for you to lodge a formal complaint without going through all this trouble of sabotage."

"I trust you implicitly," Jim answers, reflexive and without a second of hesitation."But I _do_ worry about your safety."

Jim had all sorts of darkly sexy ideas about the slave trade before, and then he'd spent two hours in the library and the dark scraped away at sexy the more he read.  He doesn't like what he's heard about, and what he's now seen in academic surveys of the thing — most of all, he doesn't like the idea of Spock in psychic handcuffs and chained at the ankles, being prostituted to the highest bidder.  The average lifespan of a body slave is roughly five years after sale and almost never from natural causes.  He knows this is what they are working to eradicate, that when Spock dips his head in graceful submission to whomsoever buys him, whoever gives Starfleet their in on this slaving ring, it's to suss out the roots of it and prevent anybody else from having to do the same, but Jim worries. 

How Pike doesn't see it, Jim doesn't know.Spock throws temper tantrums so oppressively silent that the whole Enterprise starts clinging to their dignity by their toenails and teeth.Spock has a soft spot for the obviously-bullied and a protective streak a mile wide for those who bear injustice.He is annoyingly particular about his clothes and his food and his music and his company, but he plays chess like someone self-taught, without the boring structure of so many club games, a little reckless. 

The look of murderous intent on Spock's face is banked when he says, sounding resigned, now, "I still do not understand what your presence will add to the mission."

"Hey, if nothing else, I'll be one more person they can hit before they mess up your pretty face," Jim says, mostly because he's an idiot, and right around then he realizes they're under heavy and socially-networked scrutiny by two-dozen cadets, all of whom appear to be typing furiously into their PADDs now.Kirk says, "Shit."

"I just remembered," Spock tells him after a beat, almost sweet, which is of course how all of Spock'scruelest revenge plots begin, and Jim barely hears the rest of it over the roar of dread in his ears.

***

It's Bones who puts it most succinctly.

"Oh my God," he says, "Spock is one sick, _sick_ fuck."

Jim barely resists the urge to tell Bones to shut the hell up, because Spock will hear about it, and somehow it'll all just get much, much worse — not for Bones, of course, oh no.Spock and Bones' dislike for one another manifested itself as a mutual nonaggression pact, but of course Jim wasn't so lucky, and whenever his First Officer and Chief Medical Officer were pissed at each other he was the one left trying to navigate that goddamn minefield with his C-/D+ in xenobiological diplomacy. 

"Kirk, I have to say I'm surprised you volunteered for this panel," Komack tells him, interrupting the comeback that's forming on Jim's tongue despite his better judgement. 

Jim forces himself to give the Admiral a sickly smile."Well, you know, best practices."

"Oh, exactly!" agrees another officer.Her — Jim thinks it's a her — skin is a beautiful lavender color and her three eyes crinkle at him in approval."It's just something of a surprise to know you're as interested in shipboard workflow efficiency as the rest of us."

"I am absolutely stupid about it," Jim says, deadpan.

"He is," Bones agrees sweetly."You should see when he's onboard the Enterprise.It's all flow charts all the time."

If he grits his teeth any harder, Bones is going to have to use a dental regenerator on him, and Jim refuses to give Spock the satisfaction of breaking him.Nine months in the furthest fringes of space doing the most asinine of milk runs and the most dangerous escort missions and learning to read body cues off of a fucking _Vulcan_ hasn't broken Jim; looking at Spock in _eyeliner_ hasn't broken Jim. 

"Yes, we're all very excited about synergies," Komack says, clearing his throat."Now, if you'll all turn to slide fourteen on your PADDs."

The meeting lasts six hours.Jim actually thinks he suffers a tiny stroke in the middle, but Bones refuses to examine him for obvious signs: blood trickling of Jim's ear, liquified brain draining out of his nostrils, that sort of thing.At the end of it, Jim staggers of the room with a half-dozen new workflow templates, a series of encouraging words from the other members of the panel, and the realization he's apparently helped author some sort of new best practices set by accident.

"You," Jim gasps, leaning heavily against the doorframe of Spock's office.It's a gorgeous, compact little room on the third floor of the main linguistics building, with an entire wall of windows facing the Golden Gate Bridge — the favoritism in this place is fucking appalling, Jim spares a moment to think." _You_."

Spock gives Jim the eyebrow."Yes, Captain?"

Jim allows himself to collapse into one of Spock's guest chairs.In addition to a window, the wall behind Spock's teak-colored desk is covered in starmaps, and Jim vows not to find that endearing and forces himself to wonder if Spock's ever fucked any students in this office with its big windows.But then that derails into wondering if Uhura ever sucked Spock off under that desk which of course melts into the image of Spock in that God damn eyeliner giving $5 BJs, which, _terrible_.

"You signed me up for that God awful conference," Jim whines, and Spock only says, casual as you like, his voice utterly without inflection:

"It was meant as an enriching experience, Captain."

That doesn't even deserve the energy it would take for Jim to glare at him for it, so he says instead, "I suppose your comeuppance is built-in since it appears I am now one of the authors of Starfleet's workflow best-practices protocol."

Supremely undisturbed, Spock's fingers fly across the PADD."I would not concern myself with it, Captain — Enterprise does not utilize any Starfleet recommended best practices."

Jim blinked at him."Why not?"

"Because I decided we do not," Spock replies casually. 

It's the sort of thing only insanely spoiled only children can say with a straight face, and Jim refrains from pointing it out because that best practices conference probably isn't even the worst thing Spock has up his sleeve in case of Jim's continued misbehavior.

"Okay," Jim allows, and is about to ask Spock which of the graduating cadets he's thinking about recruiting for theship when there's a knock on the opened office door.

When Jim glances over his shoulder, it's to see a trembling, weedy-looking first-year cowering in the hallway.He's at least half-human, but the eyes are a bit too wide and his pupils are cat-like slits that seem to narrow even further as he shakes in obvious terror. 

"Yes, cadet?" Spock invites, barely glancing up from his PADD, and Jim has a sudden flash of realization that Spock's probably a one-man weeder course at Starfleet.

Swallowing hard, the boy in the hallway says, "Uh, I don't want to interrupt, sir."

"As you have already interrupted, it would be illogical not to at least put forth your query," Spock answers, without any obvious irritation or humor or fucking _anything_ in his tone.It's God damn terrifying."What is it you require?"

The kid looks like he's going to cry, and it takes every ounce of machismo in Jim not to lean over and tell Spock to cut it out and stop scaring the children. 

"I — I was hoping you'd agree to help with a project," the kid squeaks."I'm working on a study of deep space travel and engine stress, and — "

Spock's face clears nearly imperceptibly, but Jim's watching very carefully, and so he catches the slight smoothing of his first officer's features, the way his eyes soften a bit, and the gentler tone in his voice when he says, "Of course.You must be Cadet Yuexi, Colonel V'Tacr told me of your studies.He is very impressed by your work."

And just like that, it's like night to day, and the kid's face goes bright red, so pleased he's knocked silent for a moment, and Jim can't even begrudge him for it — there's something chemical in Spock's approval, something that fizzes and burns up your spine and Jim's hooked on it, a shaking, desperate addict.He knows it's pathetic, to want Spock to fucking _like him_ so badly, but he'd seen something that disastrous first trip out into space together, and there'd been an electric moment when Spock had met his eyes and nodded — nothing more, but it was like the endorphin rush of falling from 8000 feet up and missing the ground.

"Yessir," Yuexi answers, beaming now."He said I should speak with you about how to gather data from the Enterprise's deep space missions."

"Indeed," Spock allows, and glancing at Jim, he says, "Conveniently, Captain Kirk is here as well — he will need to authorize any research activity — "

Jim cuts him off, waving his hand in dismissal."Your okay is enough for me."

"Are you certain, Captain?" Spock asks, one of his brows arching.And underneath the placid darkness of his eyes, Jim thinks he sees a note of amusement.They've hit a rhythm, a little, in the last few months they've worked together; Jim wasn't lying when he said he trusts Spock implicitly.If he wants to indulge Starfleet first years, then Spock can indulge Starfleet first years.

But since he's got to be a dick and everything, he clears his throat and says, "Sure — I'm always invested in helping out future generations of Starfleet's finest."

"Yes, it has always appeared to be one of your great passions," Spock says in what is probably the best God damn deadpan that ever did deadpan, and before Jim can figure out some way to dissect that enough to censure his first officer for being a fucker, Spock is telling Yuexi, "In that case, Cadet, please go directly to Lieutenant Yon'g, he leads the secondary research team for the Enterprise — I will contact him and let him know you've already been approved by the Captain.You may forward any further questions you have on the subject directly to me."  


The kid squeaks something that probably means "thank you!" and "oh my God, you're so _dreamy_ ," in his mother tongue and is off like a rocket, zooming down the hall.

"We have to talk about your tendency to undermine my authority," Jim scolds when he has Spock's full attention again, and Spock blinks his dark, dark eyes at him and asks:

"If you have any concerns, Captain, feel free to file an official form."

Jim's relationship with 'official forms,' is estranged at best, which Spock knows better than anybody else on the Enterprise, so he lets that settle with a scowl before leaning forward over Spock's desk and changing the subject.

"So, our new shipmates."

Spock hasn't exactly secured them the pick of the litter, but no one that would send the Enterprise crashing into a black hole has been brought on board either, and he and Spock debate a few potential hires with lengthy caveats.Some of them deserve second chances, and some of them don't deserve third, and Jim feels like the worst sort of tool when he sets aside potential new crewmembers for behavioral issues, for low performance.It's all part of this farce he's living day in and day out, and he's more grateful he and Spock are making these decisions together than he can say, since it's the only thing giving his decisions a veneer of legitimacy over the gross hypocrisy.

They compromise over the last two recruits — Spock gets his straight-A student, and Jim gets his fixer-upper — just as the last whispers of day have vanished from the San Francisco skyline.It's glittering and dark and tempting outside Spock's window, and Jim wonders for one utterly insane moment what Spock would say if Jim asked, "Hey, do you want to get dinner with me?"

Instead there's another knock on Spock's door — Colonel V'Tacr this time, come to collect his star pupil.

"I hope you don't mind my making off with your first officer, Captain Kirk," the colonel asks pleasantly."But the time is short, and there is still much to cover."

Deltans all take vows of celibacy before joining Starfleet as a requirement of their participation, Jim knows, but V'Tacr's smooth skin, his gorgeous green eyes, the slope of his shoulders, they're all invitations. 

"Of course not," Jim says, since punching the guy in the face would probably cause more problems than it's worth, and he nods at Spock, already sorting away the files on his desk with quiet efficiency."Spock, thanks again."

"Thank you for agreeing to help Cadet Yuexi with his project," Spock counters, and rises to his feet, tugging at the hem of his black Starfleet-issue uniform, smoothing out any wrinkles that might have dared to set in. 

Jim goes out by himself that night since Bones can't be convinced to abandon the comfort of his temporary quarters, and Jim eventually gives up trying to pry him away from his pillow and Earth Journal of Medicine.He gives the Starfleet hangouts a wide berth, hopping the BART and riding until he can't see another red or black uniform in sight and disappears into one smokey club or another.

It's too dark inside for anybody to recognize him — Captain James T. Kirk, Youngest Ever Starfleet Captain — and he melts into the crowd seamlessly, smokes clove cigarettes and drinks whiskey and Cadassian spirits and watches the strobe light dance over a mosaic of dark and light and green and shimmering skin, like a stop-motion picture of gorgeousness, and leans back against the bar and takes it all in, soaks it into his skin.They're playing some sort of rave trance he can't source,but it sounds ethereal and haunting and it makes his skin prickle in awareness. 

In another lifetime, he would have found someone particularly beautiful in the heartbeats between the bassbeats and take them out, take them out back, maybe let them take him home.But he doesn't have that anonymity anymore, and it's weird, to go from being another nameless pretty face with a bad attitude and a miles-long rap sheet to someone people stop in the street.So he hugs the corners and shadows of the room, and after he starts thinking he's going to fly apart in the music, he makes for the exits.

Outside, San Francisco is just waking up, the sky gray and sullen in the morning, and he walks home.It takes him more than an hour to get back to Starfleet, but along the way he sees storefronts opening and sees people heading out for the early shift, coming home from the night shift, the nearly-deserted BART stops.He stops at a Starbucks and buys a coffee and drinks it black on the front steps of the main campus building, watching the Golden Gate bridge and thinks that for all the awful shit that had gone into making this moment possible, he's grateful for this moment, and possibly for all that awful shit, too, because it's Tuesday and he's Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise and Spock is his first officer, and the Earth is here and everybody is waking up to face another day.

***

His zen lasts about forty minutes into the day, because that's when he gets hailed for an eyes-only meeting about the undercover op and walks in right when Colonel V'Tacr says:

"...well, there was very little you needed to be taught, Commander Spock, you appear to already be very familiar with the act of fellatio."

" _Fucking fuck_ ," is what Jim says, both because _what the fuck_ and also because he's walked straight past one empty chair at the conference room table into a large, sinuous plant that doesn't fucking appreciate his tripping all over it all, from the way it snaps and hisses at him.

It takes Spock and the colonel about five minutes to untangle him.

Jim says, "Did you — ?" pre-emptively furious on Spock's behalf.

"Captain, the colonel was merely talking about an oral exam," Spock chides him, and at what must be an utterly horrible expression on Jim's face, he revises, "Perhaps that was poor wording.What I meant to express was that the Colonel merely provided a verbal review of the act."

Jim claws at the vines, rapidly tightening in irritation around his left wrist while still trying to maintain the appropriate amount of affronted and murderous fury toward Colonel V'Tacr, who at this point is largely smirking at Jim. 

"Are you sure?Because if this was any sort of practical exam it should be made clear that Starfleet code 46 subsection 8 points A through F cover — " Jim starts, and is interrupted when Spock actually _smiles_ at him. 

It's the smallest smile Jim's ever seen, but it is a smile: the corners of Spock's mouth curve up, and when Spock's not being mean to Jim with it, he has a beautiful mouth.

"Captain," Spock says, fondly reproaching.

"I'm just saying," Jim tells him stupidly.

"I am impressed by your fluency in Starfleet regulations," Spock tells him, plucking the last of the vines from Jim's wrist with smooth efficiency, and helping him to his feet.Spock closes his hand — careful — around Jim's forearm, where his skin's covered up by his uniform, to help him to his feet, and Jim knows that's just from an entire lifetime of being a cautious touch-telepath, but he's never been more grateful for it, that Spock can't hear the frantic, embarrassing panic attack going on in Jim's head, that hasn't totally subsided yet.

Colonel V'Tacr breaks the moment."As am I," he says, dry."Overreaction aside, Captain, your ardent defense of your subordinate is inspiring."

Not bothering to hide his scowl, Jim says, "It'd take too long to train up a replacement."

"Okay then," Pike says, hovering into the room, one eyebrow already at his hairline."The planter's been broken, Kirk's doing a terrible job of hiding obvious rage, Spock is embarrassed, and V'Tacr is smirking — I see I'm just late enough."

Jim gives Pike a hangdog look."Admiral, when you recruited me, please tell me it wasn't only as entertainment."

"No," Pike tells him, grinning and taking his place at the head of the conference table."But I'm not going to lie, that's been a pretty excellent side benefit."He gestures around the room."Gentlemen — sit, please.Let's get this meeting started."

***

The meeting, like Spock's hooker lessons and eyeliner, is horrible.

The op is nowhere near as small as Jim expected, and even although in the conference room it's only Colonel V'Tacr, Admiral Pike, Jim and Spock, another two dozen people get holographically conferenced in.Most of them spare a moment to stare at Spock, or at least Jim thinks so, which is fucked up, and he realizes eventually that another downside to holographic conference is that scowling doesn't have the same impact if you're on a moon outpost 48 lightyears away.

"Captain Kirk, it's a surprise to see you here," says one man, whose stripes tag him as a Lieutenant.

"Yeah, not really," says Commander Kovack, who Jim hated in basic, hated during officer training, hated when he led Jim's team on survival exercises and hated even more for being that one asshole who made asshole comments about Vulcans around Jim, who has started more than one bar fight over his crew. 

Jim smiles sweetly at him."If I'm boring because I can be relied upon to give a damn about my people, I'll take it," he says.

Colonel V'Tacr rolls his eyes, and Spock's narrow-eyed look narrows further, at which point Jim might possibly straighten up a bit in his chair.

"Now that that's out of the way," Pike says, before Kovack can spout off something else heinous and dickish, and launches into a long, agonizing dissection of the op. 

Just under 2 million sentient beings are trafficked through the Federation yearly — it's a minuscule percentage of the living creatures within Starfleet, but it's still 2 million too many.Mostly it's children, runaways, who get picked up in space ports and shuttle docks in backwaters, who go willingly with pimps who take care of them until they're hooked — either on the validation or the drugs — and then they turn them out.The universe is too big, really, for streetwalkers anymore, but some planets turn a blind eye, and on the outer rim, almost anything can be bought for a price: a pound of flesh, a man with a whip, a 7 year-old --

"A Vulcan," Pike concludes, nodding minutely at Spock, and Jim can't help but keep one eye on his first officer, biting his lip, because while he kept his whoring largely planetside, he's heard about some of these places, doesn't like the idea of Spock there, helpless."Our in is through the upper echelon of buyers, but our ultimate goal is to find out who's running the organization."

Jim angles a look up at Pike."How does selling Spock do that?" he asks.

"As I understand it, after my sale Admiral Pike will express interest in finding something a little newer and less indestructible," Spock tells him, his voice as placid as always, but Jim's stomach turns at the implication — at least Pike looks half-sick at the thought, or else this whole meeting would be an exercise in long-form Jesus-Christ-What-the-Fuck-Is-This-Shit?

"Right," Pike agrees, "and if all goes right, after having made such a valuable sale, they'll give me an in.I'll get names, faces."

"I have confidence you will, Admiral," Spock tells him, and Jim barely resists the urge to make a face.Spock and Pike are so high school together, it's revolting.

Kovack, because he just can't resist, says, "And hey, lucky us — now Kirk will be there, too."

Jim's ready to seethe in silence to avoid another one of Spock's disapproving glares and also to treat it like a character-building moment instead of a paean to how whipped he is, but then Spock cuts in, saying, "I, for one, am pleased that Captain Kirk will be there.He's one of the more gifted strategists of our command structure in Starfleet.As it will be me on the auction block, I am not averse to additional resources."

Pike favors Jim and Spock with a fatherly look while Kovack is busy choking on his own tongue.

"Well said, Commander Spock," Pike tells the room at large mildly."Now, if I might continue."

Pike can continue all he wants, but Jim only hears maybe 10 percent of it, he spends the other 90 percent of his considerable focus staring at the side of Spock's head, watching his ears flush faintly green with something that must be embarrassment.And if this were still his backwater high school in Iowa and Spock were Ashlee Mayburn from two farms down the road, Jim would write him a note on honest to God lined notebook paper that said, "You are rad."

***

Jim's still riding the high of having Spock sort of indicate he likes him when the meeting is closed, a follow-up date is set, and he lingers too long in the doorway debating whether or not he should wait for Spock and walk down with him to the officer's mess.

Recognizing this is the most appalling sort of behavior that should get him shot in the face, Jim waffles for a bit by the wall, but then peeks inside to see what's taking Spock so long anyway, at which point his brain promptly explodes and splatters all over the inside of his skull.

Spock is crouched down near Pike's hoverchair, looking up at him with those alien-dark eyes, and Pike is smiling down at him.Jim wants to call it paternal to keep any secondary explosions from triggering, but the fondness is less benign than that, really, and then oh my God, Admiral Pike touches Spock's face, affectionate.

"I'm proud of you for agreeing to do this, Spock," he says, and Spock's chin jerks a bit, almost pulls down in what could be shyness. Jim starts checking his pulse.Obviously he's having a seizure.This has to be what having a stroke feels like.

"It is part of my duty as a member of Starfleet," Spock says, in that same smooth, unaffected voice in a softer pitch.  "And it is only right."

Pike grins.  "Good," he says, and after a pause, he asks, "You know we're not going to let anything happen to you, right?"

Spock shuts right down there, Jim can see it from the slight flare of his nostrils, the way his shoulder's square, how he resets his weight on his heels.  "I am confident you and the rest of the operations crew will do your utmost to ensure my security," he allows, "but there is no need to be irrationally protective, Admiral."

"Hey," Pike says, "you were my first officer, I broke you in — I'm allowed to be protective."

And that's so (probably not) dirty that Jim wants to claw his own eyes out, or force himself to walk away and stop peeping on this milieu like a pervert, but all he does is paste himself more tightly against the wall to avoid detection, because seriously, that best practices conference is in no way the worst thing Spock could dish at him.

"Vulcans have superior strength and endurance to — " Spock starts, and Pike cuts in with just a touch, tipping Spock's chin up toward him, and Jim swears there's something like a flare of green over Spock's cheek — a blush melting across the pale skin.

"Everything will be fine," Pike tells him.  "You can put that superior Vulcan strength away — understood?"

Spock stares at him a long time.  "Understood," he agrees finally, and begins to rise to his feet, which is around the time that the weak and dying electrical impulses in Jim's head kick in and start shrieking he better run.  And then it's like every time he stole a car or threw a brick through a storefront window or woke up to somebody's husband or  wife coming home as he bolts out of the antechamber, down a hallway, and sadly, right into Gaila.

Jim tries the, "No, everything's fine, Gaila," and "Gaila, I don't have time for this," and the flagrant, "Gaila, no!" all to no avail before finding himself in one of the many smaller conference rooms listening to her attempting to be comforting.

"I'm not even allowed to talk to you about this," Jim tries, and Gaila takes his hands into hers and looks at him earnestly.

"I am just so glad you feel like you can talk to me about this," she tells him. "I mean, I totally understand your position on this."

Rolling his eyes, Jim says, "Okay, sure, we'll go with that."

Gaila starts again, "But look, I've heard through various channels — "

"What the fuck!" Jim interrupts. "Spock's not supposed to be telling Uhura about this, either!"

" — that you are understandably concerned about Commander Spock's performance on this operation. That I know nothing about. At all," she tells him sweetly, and Jim gives her his most withering look.

"You're on gamma shift for the foreseeable future, Gaila," Jim tells her.

"No I'm not," she disagrees, and continues, because apparently no one who works for him listens to him, "look, I'm just here to tell you this, okay? Stop freaking out about Spock being a good hooker — he fucks like a boss."

He loses a couple of minutes, in between the terror and blind panic and the way his vision blacks out for a minute to the awful mental image of Spock fucking someone like a boss. (It's pretty intense.) And when he comes to again Gaila is slapping him, saying, "Jim? Jim! Hey! Asshole!"

He grabs her wrist and gasps, "Oh God, Gaila — did you — "

Jesus Christ, no," Gaila says, hushed, eyes darting left and right nervously. "And shut up when you say shit like that, Uhura would knife me at the gym, okay?"

Jim's brain is grasping at straws. "Then — "

"Look," Gaila says reasonably, "I don't know what you guys do when you get rode hard and put away wet — "

"Oh my God," Jim whimpers.

" — but when my roommate keeps staggering home at like, six in the morning blissed out like she's rolling on the best Orion E money can buy and like, can't stand on her own two legs and squirms in her seat all day — all day — I can read the glowing red fuckmachine signs, okay?" Gaila concludes.

Jim digs the heels of his hands into his eyes and tries to block out all the vivid, vivid images, because Uhura is just ungodly hot and Spock is whatever, and the two of them together has always been a catalytic conversion — it's God damn criminal that Jim has to know they're not having awkward, emotionally stunted Vulcan sex now. He'd been comforting himself that Spock probably touched her hand that once and it was enough to get him marked as a scarlet woman and tossed into the streets of New Vulcan's colony.

Anyway, he's set with women," Gaila continues. "And if you're worried about the guy thing, don't — everybody knows Pike hit it like the fist of God like, Spock's first year at Starfleet."

***

Bones is even less charitable about tripping over Jim this time.

"God damn it, Jim!" he shouts. "You're a fucking Starfleet captain, not a doorstop! Get off my floor."

Jim just rolls over onto his side and stares at a corner of the room and wishes he were dead. "Did you know that Pike apparently saw Spock as a first year and, quote, hit it like the fist of God?"

"Oh, Jesus fucking Christ," Bones shrieks. "What? Jesus fuck. What?"

Jim pushes himself up to a seated position of despair and said, "Right? I wasn't the only person who didn't know, right?"

Bones is sort of...clawing at his own face when Jim sees him, and he says, half-muffled by the tearing actions at his eyes, "No! Who told you this? God, why are you telling me this?"

"You're my friend, you have to listen to me," Jim reminds him, and goes back to lying on the floor and staring at the corner. He doesn't actually know why he's so depressed about this; his first year at Starfleet he slept his way through what Bones claimed was half the population of San Francisco — still, he never wore his sluttiest momsweater and fucked a professor after goddamn recitation.

"I'm sure he was just confused," Jim tells the ceiling of Bones' room."He was probably really young and it was the first time he'd been away from home and Pike probably just got him all confused and took advantage of him."

Ever since Jim found out about the thing with the stuff he's given up on trying to temper his more pornographic stream of consciousness.He keeps getting these vivid images of Spock — trembling, younger and more sweet than he's probably ever been in his whole life — succumbing to Pikes lecherous advances after a particularly vigorous tactics class.He was probably wearing one of those God damn hideous mom sweaters Spock wears during his free time — as much as Jim loves Amanda by-proxy, that woman had clearly mugged the ugliest Vulcan sheep she could find — as he let Pike push him down, horizontal, across a desk.There was the possibility he'd put a fist in his mouth to muffle his less-than-Vulcan cries of surprise.Horrible.

"Okay, aside from the fact that I'm going to have to kill you for making me think about this," Bones growls at him, "there is *no universe* in which anyone 'takes advantage' of Spock, okay?"

Jim is about to say something monumentally stupid about how, younger, Spock may have been more malleable and fragile, but it's so dumb he can't even make his mouth form the words.  He knows, logically, that Bones is right, and that if Gaila is right — fucking Gaila, Jim thinks hatefully — then Spock probably fucks everybody ever like a boss and always has.

"I guess," Jim says, relenting, and Bones takes advantage of his moment of despair and hauls Jim up to his feet, shoves him out the door of his room, and locks it, shouting, "And stay out!" 

***

Jim has ever intention of trying to trick Spock into talking with him about his nonexistent feelings and perhaps offering to file some paperwork on his behalf about this bullshit with Pike, Despoiler of Innocents in Mom Sweaters, but instead he walks into Spock's office and freezes in place, every muscle tensing.

Spock is holding a hand mirror, pressing the pad of his middle finger to his lip, pressing something gleaming and red there, his mouth half-opened, like the beginning of a gasp, and Jim has to swallow hard, force his eyes away and to the long, pale curve of Spock's neck, disappearing into his black uniform.

"Sorry," he blurts out, and hears Spock make a noise that sounds suspiciously like a sigh and set down the mirror.

"There is no need to apologize, Captain, the door to my office was open," Spock says.

"But still," Jim says, and hazards a glance up.  Spock's got the eyeliner on again, dark lines around dark, wide eyes, and the dark red on his mouth is consuming, distracting, obscene.  "Is this, um, part of your preparations?"

Spock nods, short, and — thank God — takes a piece of tissue and begins wiping at his mouth.

"Colonel V'Tacr suggested I practice application on my own, as there will not be anyone to assist me during the undercover portions of our operation and I heeded his advice," he tells Jim, motioning for him to take a seat.  "I'm grateful he suggested doing so — I was not prepared for how difficult cosmetics can be."

"Liquid eyeliner, man," Jim says, automatic, "it can be killer."

Spock cocks a brow at him.  "Personal experience, Captain?"

Jim's really glad there's no way to blush to death.  "I had an intensely misspent youth," he admits.

"Then I may draw on your knowledge for advice going forward," Spock says, matter-of-fact.

Spock's the type of person that forces everybody to look underneath the underneath after reading in between the lines, and Jim lets the words percolate in his head for a bit before he slaps together any type of response.  Most times silences can be awkward, but he'sweirdly comfortable like this, slouched in a chair in Spock's office, listening to Spock listen to his absence of action.  And this is something that's been gnawing at him for a few days now, Spock's meaningful silences on Jim's role in this farce.

"You know I'm not worried about your safety because I think you can't take care of yourself, don't you?" Jim asks.

Blinking, Spock says, "There seems to be little reason to be concerned about my safety other than a conviction I will be unable to attend to my own needs, Captain."  He sounds as offended as he ever does, which probably means he's been calculating the best and most grisly ways to kill Jim without leaving a trace; one of the major problems with such a terrifyingly proficient first officer is that he could get away with it, easy, Jim thinks with some measure of regret.

"It's not a rational concern," he says to Spock.  "I'm just — you're my friend."

Oh, God, Jim thinks, and cases the windows.  He knows they're shatterproof but it's worth considering the possibility of flinging himself out of one.

"How does that relate?" Spock says, sounding perplexed, and Jim decides he's not going to be hurt by the fact that Spock didn't say that Jim was his friend, too.

"Humans, Spock," he says.  "We get worried about our friends — and it doesn't have anything to do with us not trusting their abilities. It's illogical, I know."

Spock's mouth knits into something very close to a smirk.  "Highly illogical," he agrees, but he seems mollified, finally, and some of the tension bleeds out from in between them, and Jim wonders what he can say or do now to fill the silence that had changed again, into something pulled a little taut with expectation, so he clears his throat and asks:

"So, do you have to wear harem pants?"

***

It's a comment on how scattered and fragile his crew's relationships are without the Enterprise because despite the fact that Jim is there gawking as Spock sits with his same fluid efficiency in a pair of very, very different and flimsy linen pants, nobody — not Bones, not Uhura, not even Chekov and his tiny Russian fists of fury — have appeared to give him what-for. 

Jim has to give Starfleet credit: it's a fucking credible con. 

Where they found the ship — a languorous, silver-gray dream of an Odyssey class pleasure cruiser — or its trappings — gorgeous reproductions of famous paintings, the dearest Andorian crystal tumblers — Jim doesn't know, but it works.Everything in the Space Cowboy is gorgeous and rare to match, even Spock, perched in his delicate linen tunic and slacks, barefoot, his every step jangling from the anklets and bracers and bangles at his wrists.Jim's first officer is wearing a small fortune, nestled in the hollow of his throat, a cascade of diamonds and topaz, dotted with amber.Even is hair is different, his dark, sleek bangs brushed out of place and slightly wild — like someone's been running their hands through his hair, possessive, entitled.

They launch in 10 minutes, and when they unmoor, they all lose their names, their histories.Admiral Christopher Pike changes to Adam Pike, and the Space Cowboy's crew shifts from a roster of some of Starfleet's finest noncommissioned officers and specialists to namelessness.James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise changes into Just Jim, sir, and he's lucky he's in shitkicker boots and his older leather jacket, a busted t-shirt and jeans, looking just the kind of downmarket Jim Kirk has always been, underneath the chest candy and nice uniforms. Spock melts away into Sulah, who was scavenged out of the wreck of a Vulcan transport and trafficked out of the Federation states into some of the more-developed rim planets, and he grew up there in the finest of brothels before reaching the grand old age of fourteen and being plucked for Adam Pike's personal seraglio.Jim knows it's just false history, that in reality Spock was the ridiculously spoiled and loved-to-distraction only child of Vulcan's closest approximation to royalty, but it hurts, it aches, to think of Spock alone and scared, hurt, as a child with no one to help him, of being ten and pushed to his knees between somebody's thighs — it's fucked up, it makes Jim's stomach roll, it makes him glad they're doing this, even though he hates that they're doing this.

"Your disguise is very convincing," Spock tells him."Did it take you long to find suitable clothing for your role in the operation?"

Jim's heard about the epic shitstorm that went into dressing Spock.For a bunch of military guys who really should had been more concerned about infiltrating security systems, there were a lot of God damn opinions on which precious metals and stones looked the most appealing against Spock's milky-pale skin — the motherfuckers.

"Uh," Jim says."Ages."

Across the cabin, Pike is smirking at him, adjusting his rich old pervert costume — a finely tailored suit, gleaming-black shoes.Pike's got his asshole leer down, and Jim thinks meanly all the guy needs is an Orion slave girl and a protesting Spock on the other hand serve as a living cliche of douchebaggery.

"Don't I recognize that jacket, Kirk?" Pike asks, because _seriously_ , he's such a dick.

Jim glares at him."No, sir," he lies.

"Okay," Pike allows, his mouth still locked into a crooked smile, and over the speakers, Lieutenant Vartha Barthi says, "Everyone prepare for warp — we have secured permission to leave moorings."

And Pike, growing serious for a beat, says, "Let's do this — Kirk, Spock," and in tandem, because they can't help it, because even if Jim's mad at him and Spock is 'it's complicated' with him, it's still Admiral Pike, and they say, "Yes, sir," as they lose the steadiness of their gravity anchors and the ship lopes off, arcing away into the dark hollows of space.

***

Spock spends the first leg of the trip in mediation, and Pike amuses himself with a PADD, probably reading something douchey and rich.Jim spends it in navigation, memorizing the control panels of the ship, escape routes, the nearest landmarks and starmaps and charting mental courses to the closest Starfleet bases, figuring out who can send backup first when this whole thing goes to shit, as everything inevitably does.

By the time he staggers out into the main cabin again, he sees that Spock has folded himself onto his knees beside Pike's hoverchair.He's graceful in his submission and serene, his face smooth and beautiful and untroubled, hands folded softly in his lap, the diamonds still catching stray lights from transports, stars, outside the sweeping windows of the ship.

Logically, Jim knows that right about here is where — traditionally — he would be engaging in what his elementary school guidance counselor referred to as a "fit of acting out."  As the designated genius-level repeat offender of the lower Midwest, he fucking excels at acting out.

But it's a sign of how much he's really grown as a person that all he does is fist his hands tight enough that he can feel his nails digging into his palm and takes the deep, calming breaths that Gaila had recommended that time after he'd stopped respirating after she'd told him that horrible thing about Pike.  And Spock.  And the momsweater.  Which of course brings him back to this exquisitely terrible moment right now.

"He's getting into character," Pike tells him, just out of nowhere, a smirk tugging up one corner of his mouth.  "Said something about a Vulcan trance."

Jim grits his teeth so hard he can hear them squeak.  "I see," he says.

"You've got to learn to breathe, Captain," Pike advises.  "Or you're not going to do too well when we release the Enterprise back for space exploration again."

"I'm breathing just fine," Jim lies.  


Pike's smirk melts away into something a little bit softer, and he engages his hoverchair, sliding away from Spock's side and down one of the generous hallways of the cruiser, toward the cabins, calling over his shoulder, "You're just making him worse than he already is," and honest to God, Jim Kirk had no idea if he's talking to him, or Spock.

Jim debates standing there and staring at Spock for a while or sitting down and reviewing the operations plan one last time, but the choice gets made for him when Spock opens one dark eye, and then the other, slow.

"Admiral Pike says I'm making you — his phrasing was 'bonkers,'" he says mildly.

Jim hates that guy so much.  "Pike makes shit up all the time," he mutters, flopping down into one of the leather seats lining the room.

"Indeed," Spock agrees.  "Admiral Pike is known for accusing me of being spoiled — clearly ridiculous."

Jim's not good enough with Vulcan-to-English to tell if Spock's actually capable of making fun of himself, but he figures it's probably safer just to let that one lie than to invite himself into a bunch of best practices meetings where Spock will ignore the outcomes because he's _totally_ spoiled.

"Admiral Pike also said he and his first officer spent a year fighting before they reached any sort of compromise," Spock volunteers, and this one is genuinely out of nowhere.

"Did they?" Jim asks, because he can't imagine Pike, who gets along with everybody to some degree or another and who is infamous for being unflappable, letting anybody get under his skin — much less anybody under his command.

Spock unfolds himself — rising to his feet and quietly stretching his arms, rolling his shoulders, one long, sinuous curve — and perches on the leather seat opposite Jim.

"Indeed," Spock tells him, and Jim could swear he's grinning.  "Their disputes are a matter of public record."

Jim doesn't have any reasons to hide his grin.  "Hey, we haven't had any disputes on the public record yet," he says.

"That is true, Captain," Spock agrees.

Jim grins, all teeth, and adds, "Since we were commissioned for the Enterprise, anyway."

"I am saying there is no need for you to be bonkers," Spock replies, and before Jim can say something about how he's sort of touched, Spock clears his throat and asks, "Would like to play a game of chess, Captain?"

Jim would.

***

And he's left clutching at that sense of peace when they arrive in Perman the next day.

It's chaotic, maddening, the natural result of overpopulation, corruption, and zero oversight.Jim's grateful they're riding the asshole luxury track, and even though they can see the teeming masses through the glass bauble of Perman's private moorings, they don't personally have to endure them.

"Mr. Pike, it's an honor to finally meet you in person," hums their greeter, a spectacularly ugly Nortellian with three sets of gills along his thick, gray neck.  "We have made all the arrangements you have requested."

Pike has made a couple of minute changes to the way he carries himself, leadership fading into entitlement, and Jim checks himself, forces himself to stay in the doorway of the Space Cowboy, waiting.

Spock is secreted away, in an inside compartment with no windows and a lot of fucking cushions, lounging in an ocean of silk.  The look on his face when Jim had left him there was roughly two times as shitty and annoyed as Spock had looked when he'd lost his second round of chess the night before.

"I expected nothing less," Pike tells the Nortellian.  "I assume there has been an appropriate transport arranged for my retinue."

The Nortellian makes a burbling noise Jim thinks is supposed to be deferential laughter — the physical tells are always the hardest in xenolinguistics.  "Of course, Mr. Pike — it would not do for your holdings to be damaged before transaction."

"Excellent," Pike agrees, while Jim reminds himself that punching people in the face without being prompted isn't a good way to maintain cover.  "Jim?"

He shakes himself a little, and asks, as surly as he feels, "Yeah?"

"Fetch Sulah, will you?  And be delicate about it — you know how he gets," Pike says, absent, divorced from the moment, like he's already thinking about who he'll replace Sulah with — someone newer, someone who fights a little more.

Jim grits his teeth.  "Yep," he says, and vanishes into the doorway of the ship again, stomping down the hallway.

They've spared no amount of detail for this cover, Jim realizes with some appreciation, because Spo — Sulah's door doesn't lock.  In fact, it doesn't even close, really, just slides gently to a near-seal, and in the sliver left open Jim can see the rich purples and silvers and grays that make up the room, the drape of brocade.

He thinks about knocking, about calling out, "Sulah?" but figures that anybody who was really trafficked into sex slavery at the age of 9 doesn't have a lot of privacy concerns, and so he pulls the door open, leans in.

"Jim," Spock says, sitting curled into the lotus position in a far corner of the room.  He's established himself near a curtain, partially hidden, and for some reason that makes Jim ache a little.

"Showtime," Jim tells him, and Spock nods, rising to his feet in one smooth, unbroken motion, his bracelets and bangles jangling.

He spares a minute to reach over a cushion for something, and Jim's confused for a minute before he sees it — a long, cream-white length of gauzy cloth, mostly transparent, and exhaustively embroidered along the hem.  Spock drapes it over his hair, pulls it around himself like Jim's seen women from the Vulcan council do — hands efficient and quick.

It seems to hide most of his face away, just the suggestion of swallowing-dark eyes, the faint gleam of his mouth, wet.

"Um," Jim says, his throat going suddenly and completely dry.

"I'm ready," Spock tells him, and waits, patient, until Jim forces himself into motion.Spock pads after him in delicate, gold sandals as they leave the ship, as they are handed off into the transit — a tiny, cunning little shuttlecraft shaped like a bubble.

Pike's already talking with the Nortellian when they step inside, and Spock folds himself delicately on the floor, reflexive, while Jim stands to his left, glowering.  Pike talks about the weather and his business and ignores Spock entirely — but the Nortellian, he can't tear his gaze away.

It's exactly what they wanted from Spock's downcast gaze, the fine lines of his hands and the slope of his shoulders, Jim tells himself.

Their bubble floats them above the rabble and into a gorgeous hotel, shaped like a fin with metals and glass that gleam in an oily rainbow of colors against the slope of the building.

Jim is dispatched first, as a courtesy, to check out their rooms — a suite with a three-tiered balcony, an infinity pool, a greenhouse overflowing.The bedrooms are lavish with silks and cushions, heaped high with pillows on the bed, the linens cloudlike and soft and stretched without a single wrinkle across the mattresses, and Kirk forces himself not to think of Spock spread out across them, eyes shut and back arched, someone swaying between his thighs.

Everything is impeccable, well-appointed, gorgeous, and bugged to the gills.

There're listening devices tucked away in gleaming vases, under tables, set into the molding and just inside the lip of a wall sconce.Their hosts know they must know, but to remove them or block them would be suspicious, and so Jim just checks that nobody left any bombs or dead bodies anywhere before finding Pike again.

This time, they're at the hotel bar, and Pike is drinking something luxe and dark red like melted rubies, steaming gently, one hand carding casually through Spock's hair where he kneels, otherwise ignored, on the floor.

"It's clean," Jim says, waiting for a natural break in Pike's conversation, and tries to keep himself from staring at the way Spock's got his eyes closed with what looks to him like forced calm. Spock doesn't touch anybody, really — not even Uhura — and this has to be terrible, invasive.

Pike finishes off his drink. "Excellent news," he says. "Then we'll proceed to the room directly — I want to be fresh for tonight."

Jim doesn't mask his scowl quickly enough, and the Nortellian catches it, eyes crinkling with something that Jim can't read — he fucking hates deciphering alien body language. Poker at Starfleet was always like burning money.

"Right, I'll go get the elevator," Jim manages, and Pike notes, pulling his hand out of Spock's hair and saying, "Sulah — you go with him. Set up my rooms."

Unfolding himself, Spock moves silently, without hesitation, fetching up a half-step after Jim and trailing him quietly.This job sucks, Jim spares a minute to think, and when they get into the elevator in the far end of the room, he can't help but to turn and look at Spock — the way he'd lowered his head, the defeated slope of his shoulders — and tighten his fists, and when he looks up, the Nortellian is still watching them, fascinated, as the elevator doors slide shut.

***

Spock apparently actually has a fucking _list_ of shit he has to do when they get to the suite, and any attempt Jim makes at engaging him in light conversation with previously agreed-upon code words fails in the face of Spock's apparent need to personally turn down Pike's God damn bed.

"Is that really necessary?" he asks, leaning against a commode chest, running his fingernail along a flaw in one of it's mother-of-pearl inlays and trying not to be deeply freaked out by the way Spock is _smoothing imaginary wrinkles_ out of the fine linens of the bed everybody's supposed to think _Pike is fucking him in later._

Spock spares him a flat look."It is my duty and pleasure to serve my master, Jim."

That deserves the scowl Jim offers in reply."I don't remember Pike requesting housekeeping."

"It is my duty and pleasure to see to needs my master may not have anticipated as well," Spock reminds him, and picks at something on one of the impeccable pillows on the bed, frets with the edge of a sheet. 

Jim has a bunch of other points to make about how just because Spock is Pike's sex slave pet Vulcan doesn't mean he has to fret over textile perfection, but he doesn't actually know how to convey any of it without using the phrase sex slave pet Vulcan.

And besides which, if this is the only capacity in which rough trade Jim has ever known sex slave pet Spock, it's not like he should be protesting Spock's basic lot in life, anyway, no matter how horrible beyond words it is to watch Spock meander through the hotel penthouse fixing things and frowning at slight imperfections.

"I assume you have secured the penthouse, then?" Spock asks, and it's funny to hear his ordinary, brisk tone softened around the edges, a murmur but still a directive. Spock's never really gotten a hang of this "second in command" thing, no matter how much he hates being bad at stuff.'

"Secured as it can be," Jim says, light, because Spock will know what that means. He knocks a few plush cushions out of place on one of the lavish couches that dot the living area, that slouch across the patio and toward the infinity pool overlooking the city, going neon and dark outside. "Want me to go check on our benevolent overlord downstairs?"

"Our master would not appreciate the interruption," Spock says quietly, putting the cushion back in place. "He sent you away, after all, for privacy."

Jim rolls his eyes, settles himself on the least expensive-looking chair in the room. "Yeah, probably about selling you to the highest bidder," he spits out.

Jim means for it to be mocking and mean, but mostly it comes out pissed and fragile. He's a shitty actor.

Spock favors him with a flat, expression, eyes dark and deep, and he says, even more quietly than before, "If that is what he wishes, then it is my — "

"Oh my God, shut up with that," Jim snaps. "It is not your fucking duty or pleasure."

"He is my master," Spock replies, soft, and after a moment of stillness, goes back to the bedroom, folding himself back down onto his knees by the left side of the bed, hands folded in his lap and silent, eyes downcast.

Jim just swallows hard, sore all over, and tears himself away because staring at Spock isn't going to help him any, it's just going to make him crazier, so he goes and sits in a chair by the bedroom door and sharpens one of his knives instead.It makes him _look_ crazier, but given the circumstances, he's okay with that, and he lets himself glance back over his shoulder to where Spock — even deep in meditation — somehow looks equal parts annoyed and disappointed in him, before turning back to glower determinedly at the suite door.

It's another half hour before Pike makes his way into the room, looking a little red-cheeked from the booze and overly careful with his body, and Jim has a sudden flash that this isn't particularly easy on anybody, so he should stop being such a shit.

"Sir," he says, sheathing the knife and rising to his feet, and Pike waves him off.

"I'm fine," Pike tells him, "just woozy — that shit they were pouring down my throat was the liquid equivalent of getting punched by Romulans, I swear."

Jim opens his mouth, but Pike cuts him off, saying, "Is Sulah waiting for me?" 

Teeth clack, jaw snaps shut, and it takes a beat before Jim manages, "Yeah.He is."

Pike favors him with a narrow-eyed look, and he says, "Right," slow, before he hovers into the suite, shutting the door behind him, and Jim knows he's being eight kinds of batshit but he just stares at it, the forbidding, sleek surface of it, and swallows hard over and over again.Christopher Pike has never been anything but an upstanding officer and Spock's mentor and friend, Jim's impetus for joining Starfleet and plucking himself out of a gutter.Pike wouldn't ever do anything untoward unless he had to, and Jim suspects that Spock wouldn't mind even if Pike did, but Jesus _fucking Christ_. 

The plan, as it is, involves getting Spock appraised and slated for the invitation-only auction, which Starfleet sources say is always well-attended by the uppermost echelons of management.The acquisition of names, faces, anything that will allow Starfleet to identify those in charge is the goal of the mission; Pike may acquiesce to have Spock inspected and sold, but no actual transaction should occur before they get the fuck outta dodge.Should the situation go sideways, they are to abort and rendezvous at the a nearby Starfleet maintenance facility, two planets over.Jim has been told, separately, that he is allowed to shoot anybody he wants if he needs to.

Jim's gone from suffering denial and isolation, anger, and has moved swiftly past bargaining and into self-pity and depression, when the door to the suite whispers open again, and Spock exits, looking unmolested and unruffled.

"But," he says.

"Our master has informed me he does not need my services tonight," Spock says.

"He's not my 'master,'" Jim says, trying not to sound embarrassingly giddy about it, and adds, "What, too drunk to get it up?" even though he knows, in his bones, that Spock will somehow tell Pike about it, and that when Jim least expects it, that will come back and bite him in the ass in some sort of agonizingly pedantic way that involves paperwork and diplomatic missions to highly manneristic civilizations where he'll have to wear specialized fetish clothing — he just knows it. 

Spock doesn't dignify that with an answer, and heads for one of the other bedrooms, and Jim pulls his creepy stalker routine long enough to check that Spock's bedded down for the night before he claims the living room couch, shoving it into a corner that doesn't back any windows and with a clear view of both obvious exits. 

He sleeps with the knife under his wadded-up jacket and tries not to worry about tomorrow.

***

Mornings on Perman apparently involve Spock pointedly taking to his knees in front of Pike's suite and refusing to move until Pike wakes up and tells him to. 

Today, Spock is wearing pale green, which brings out the faint green of his cheeks and in the tips of his ears, and somehow makes his eyes look even darker and huger, and the combined effect of the kohl and the poison-red lipstick and the clothes and Spock's soft, black hair makes him sort of hard to look at without wanting to reach over and touch.

"We're meeting with the appraisers today," Pike says, absent and picking at his breakfast of something that looks like dragonfruit and eggs, sipping at replicated coffee and ignoring Spock where he's situated himself at Pike's left side.Pike catches Jim's eye."Let's be extra careful, shame to get all this way just to let someone damage the merchandise."

Jim nods, wordless, and tries to channel Clint Eastwood's silent, renegade, badass cool, because otherwise, he's just going to say, "This fucking sucks; I'm leaving and I'm taking Spock with me."

It lasts until their little entourage exists their suite, where they're met by the elevators by that same godawful Nortellian from last night, who leers extensively at Spock.Jim spends some time consoling himself that Spock, at least, has a lot of experience being leered at by certain people (read: Jim) and has always composed himself admirably.

"Your Sulah is looking particularly beautiful today, Mr. Pike," the Nortellian coos.

"Sulah is always beautiful," Pike says, easy."The appraiser?"

"Oh, yes," their guide chirps, and they're swept away, into the glass bauble elevator again and whirling out over the city.

They'd been briefed in preparation for the worst case scenario, and they'd braced themselves for any variance of awfulness that could come from this part: scary syndicate men with invasive needles, lecherous doctors with cold hands, or worse, potential buyers who want a taste, first.There aren't really any back-up plans, and nothing they can do at this point would warrant cutting their losses and running, and Jim had been suffering fever dreams, preemptively coaching himself out of punching everybody in the face if some slaver did anything to Spock at all. 

Perman, luckily for everybody involved, is too good for that sort of thing, and Jim thinks even Spock lets out some indication of relief when they reach the appraiser and find it to be a series of machines: gene sequencer, universal mass spec, manned by a tiny, twitchy man with inch-thick glasses and a high, squeaking voice.It's the matter of a cheek swab to ascertain Spock's valuable and rare provenance — "Oh, _half-human,_ even," the Nortellian had purred — and a body scan to check for any obvious defects or health issues, both of which Spock submits to with the same unquestioning, docile acceptance he's displayed this entire trip.It's officially freaking Jim the fuck out. 

"Perfect, perfect in every way," the Nortellian says, approving."Your Sulah will do well at auction tonight, Mr. Pike."

Pike arches a brow."Then my least-compensation is guaranteed." 

Spock's apparently worth at least 550,000 credits.Jim knows this because there had been one truly awful 20 minutes last week where Spock had explained the entire auction system to Jim and assured him he was worth at least as much, probably more, but possibly not more than 1 million credits, since after all he could not be bred.It was one of those days Jim had tried to wash out of his brain with alcohol, and he'd wondered if he should maybe send Uhura a memo about better-socializing her boyfriend, but the consequences of having to deal with Uhura after she finds out Spock had discussed his relative value if he _could_ be bred were too terrible to think about.

"Indeed," the Nortellian says, bright."Although I am not concerned your Sulah won't fetch a much more impressive price at auction anyway — there are many deep pockets and discerning tastes to be in attendance tonight, and they have all heard the rumors."

The smile Pike offers up is fucking _filthy_ , even Jim can't help but be sort of impressed.

"Oh, they're all true," he assures the Nortellian, and because Jim Kirk's life is totally fucking awful, that is when Admiral Christopher Pike leans over, tips Spock's chin up with one finger and _kisses_ him — lush and wet and possessing — and asks, raspy when he breaks away, "Aren't they, baby?"

Jim, mostly occupied with not choking on his own tongue, almost misses how Spock's pupils are totally blown and how his mouth is red and bruised and gleaming wet when he says, "Yes, Master."

***

The rest of the day is hard and awful. 

The process of drafting the exquisitely complex paperwork that provides for the transfer of Spock to another to-be-determined owner is hard and awful.Watching Spock being videotaped and photographed for his evening's sales pitch is hard and awful, especially since the room is cold and Spock is barefoot, and the videographer keeps touching Spock with casual disregard on naked skin — until Spock's actually sort of grimacing, and Jim, because Pike is still fucked off in a corner with said complex hard and awful paperwork, is forced to intervened, pry the guy's hand off of Spock's wrist and inform him all further stage direction will be verbal, period.Also, Jim's dick is hard and awful, and insistent in his pants, because he should be too worried to want to fuck, but when the hell has Jim Kirk ever been too worried to want to fuck? 

The video, when it's done, is surprisingly tasteful, a cursory overview of Spock's age, height, weight and a general description of his features.It includes a clip of Spock walking, a clip of Spock kneeling in submission.The videographer promises they'll sleep in a little voiceover about the rarity of his history, and Jim nods dumbly, watching it all get cut together like this is a commercial or a home video. 

The worst part about all of this, the hardest and most awful part, is how fucking _normal_ everything is.

Nobody in the back offices that they've wended through have been particularly terrible, and Jim swears he saw fucking cubicles when they passed down a certain gray-green hallway.The videographer, even if he seems to have divorced himself from basic sentient decency, has an honest look around his thrice-lidded eyes, and he pauses in the middle of work to take a phone call about an apartment he's looking at.People have office supplies and desk phones and it's all just so God damn ordinary that Jim wants to rip out his hair and scream that they are _selling people into slavery_.Remind them that they're _abducting children_ or _trafficking them out of foster care_ and selling them into a lifetime of rape and torture and accelerated death, and how can they sit here asking Jim if he wants anything from the fucking break room replicator when Spock is sitting in the corner like an ottoman that Pike wants to replace with a shinier model.

Pike sends them off first, goes with the Nortellian to tour the slave facilities to see if anybody catches his eye, and instructs Jim to bear Sulah up to their rooms and see that he's ready for tonight.

"And don't get any stupid ideas, either," Pike warns him, and for a minute Jim honestly can't figure out what Pike's talking about, and then the Nortellian leers at him _and_ Spock knowingly, and Jim feels himself blush so hard he nearly passes out.

"It's not — " he starts, but Spock cuts in with, "Yes, Master," and begins retreating to their suite without another word.

In the background, he hears Pike saying, "He's good, but not good enough for me to share," and the Nortellian chuckles in reply, "Of course!But truly, who can blame him, you do keep a rare delight on hand — I only hope we have something lovely enough to satisfy your obviously high standards."

Jim's shaking by the time they reach the elevator, and the second the door shuts, he yells, " _Fuck!Fuck this place!Fuck this_ ," because he can't hold it in any longer.He doesn't like this cloak and dagger bullshit, he wants to arrest everybody and make Spock wear uniform pants and outlaw eyeliner.And he's so embarrassed, too, by how badly he's handling this, how freaked out he's getting over an assignment he more or less hijacked, and how he has the least taxing part — Pike's looking at fucking enslaved children, and Spock's whoring himself, for fuck's sake — and is reacting the most poorly.It's God damn embarrassing.

"It's not embarrassing," Spock tells him, his voice clear, and lacking the rounded slurs that Sulah speaks in, and Jim blinks at him in shock for a second until he realizes Spock is touching the naked skin of Jim's wrist with his fingers."This _is_ wrong, Captain."

Jim knows he should be upset that Spock's cheating, peeking, skin to skin, that it is, in some ways, a violation, but it's Spock, and Jim's lousy at secrets anyway. 

"You're handling it better than me, and look at you," he croaks."Fuck.Sorry."

Spock closes his eyes."I am not handling it at all, Captain," he says, "since this horrible waste of life is exceedingly illogical."

"Yeah?" Jim asks, and the elevator is drawing closer and closer to their floor. 

"Yes," Spock confirms, and his mouth in a tight set, he says, "And Captain?"

Jim blinks at him."Yes, Spock?"

"If you were the type of being that _could_ handle this well," Spock tells him, "then I fear our disputes on the Enterprise actually _would_ require court intervention."

Jim wants to say something like, "Holy shit, you just complimented me," take his victory lap when he can, but it's hard to stop blushing, feeling shy at Spock's words.For most people, talk is so cheap, and Jim know's he's got a pretty face, a sweet mouth, and everybody likes telling him things that make him smile, piss him off, get a reaction out of him, but Spock doesn't waste time with any of that bullshit, which makes this all the more humbling, and he _does_ say, "Spock," but then the elevator door slides open and they're transformed again.

 


End file.
